Apple Pie Jamboree

Pie goes on sale on Friday afternoon. On July 17, 2026, the first day of that year’s Apple Pie Jamboree, the organizers announced “Pie time has officially begun!” By then the Pateros firefighters were at work in Memorial Park, selling sloppy joes from 4 to 8 p.m. that evening and again the next. Pie and ice cream go with the sloppy joes, and the sale is a fundraiser for the firefighters.

The park is the town’s festival ground, a long stretch of shade and grass on Lakeshore Drive beside Lake Pateros, the 20-mile reservoir behind Wells Dam. City hall, the visitor center and the Pateros Museum stand at the north end. The Monument to the Methow, raised to the people who lived where the Methow River meets the Columbia, stands at the south end. The Riverview Pavilion sits between them and opens onto the downtown pedestrian mall. Restrooms and free hot showers are open around the clock, and curbside spaces take campers without hookups. A 2018 account says the jamboree keeps camping space because so many family reunions are scheduled around it. In 2026 a school bus ran a shuttle so visitors could skip hunting for parking downtown.

The jamboree is held on the third weekend of July, every year. It is run by the Apple Pie Jamboree Association, a nonprofit whose stated purpose is to raise money for local youth activities, and according to the 2018 account it has kept admission free.

Friday supper and a movie at the pavilion

The association’s tentative schedule for 2027, set for July 16 through 18, begins on Friday with a Vitalant blood bus parked on site from 2:30 to 5:30. A brass band plays at 5, and a cornhole tournament starts at 6. In 2026 teams paid $20, and all of it went to youth activities. From 8 to 11 there are kids’ crafts and a movie in the park, shown at the Riverview Pavilion.

Saturday from the color run to the fireworks

Saturday starts at 7 with the color run. In 2026 it was a one-mile fun run, untimed, and runners could sign up at 6:30 that morning. Breakfast is served at the same hour; in 2026 it was pancakes, until 10. The button raffle opens, and three-on-three basketball starts at 8. The pie and ice cream sale opens at 10.

The parade steps off at 11. Entries gather near the corner of Industrial Way and Dawson Street. Like several of the town’s first streets, Dawson Street is named for an officer of the First Washington Volunteer Infantry, in this case Major Lewis R. Dawson, its acting brigade surgeon.

Jet ski races start on the Columbia at 11:30 and run again Sunday from 10 to 3. They belong to the weekend but operate on their own, apart from the jamboree’s fundraising. Kids’ crafts and games begin at 12:30, the sloppy joes return at 4, and the button raffle closes at 6. In 2026 winners had until 6 that evening, or 8 to 10 Sunday morning, to collect their prizes. Fireworks go up at 10 p.m.

On Sunday the vendors stay all day, and the volleyball team serves a biscuits and gravy brunch at 9 to raise money for itself. Jamboree T-shirts are sold ahead of time. In 2026 the organizers wrote, “We usually sell out of shirts fast.” The Okanogan County tourism council’s listing names still other events: a quilt show, bingo, a dunk tank, a hoop shoot, a jog-a-thon and the Ray Stanley Memorial Bass Tourney.

Helmets for the ski school

The money goes back to the children. In 2018 the jamboree was written up for a regional community-success summit, with Tracy Miller as contact. That account said it raised up to $20,000 a year for safety and enrichment programs, from swimming and ski lessons to field trips and the Missoula Children’s Theatre. The association still sponsors the theater program. In July 2026, the week after the jamboree, local young actors staged “The Wiz of the West.”

The same account dates the jamboree to 1947. It says Pateros, a town of fewer than 600 people, started it because its leaders saw the need to pull together for youth programs the children might not otherwise reach. The event has changed with its organizers and with what the town needed most. It has always given local groups a place to raise money; the Pateros Booster Club and the Loup Loup Ski School used it to buy helmets for the football team and the ski program. A parade, games and entertainment have always been part of it, and the jet ski races were added more recently. Organizing jobs, the account says, pass down through families. In so small a place, the hardest part is finding enough volunteers.

The Pateros Museum keeps the jamboree’s history, including the governors who have come to it.

A mayor from the town of duck raisers

The jamboree of July 19–21, 2013, doubled as the town’s centennial. Pateros was incorporated in 1913, but the townsite dates to 1900. That year Lt. Charles E. Nosler, a veteran of the First Washington Volunteers, bought Lee Ives’s homestead at the mouth of the Methow and named the town for a place in the Philippines. Nosler told a Spokane paper in 1900 that it was the point on the Pasig River, about 10 miles from Manila, “where the gallant advance was made by crossing the river in two dug-out canoes.”

For the centennial, a delegation came from Pateros, Philippines. More than 60 Filipino guests came with it, from California, Oregon, Washington and Canada. Lena Howe played both national anthems on flute, and Matt Brideson, Nosler’s great-grandson, sang them. Mayors Gail Howe and Joey Medina signed the sisterhood document, with State Representative Brad Hawkins as official witness, and the two rode in the jamboree parade. Howe gave Medina a Syracuse China grill plate from a set once used at the Ives Hotel. Medina gave her a replica of a painting of his Pateros in the 1800s.

Medina spoke on Saturday, July 20. His town’s name, he explained, comes from the Spanish for duck raisers. He recalled his childhood Christmases there: “Our Christmas in Pateros will never be complete without the wonderful smell of Pateros Washington apples.” Then he turned to the history between the two towns: “We come here not as invaders but as friends.” The city’s museum page dates the official sisterhood to the following year, when a delegation from Pateros, Washington, traveled to the Philippines. Medina’s complete speech is kept at the Pateros Museum, at the north end of the park.